drink: Pisco, a Chilean brandy
bar: Leopold Bros. of Ann Arbor
I have been meaning to post a quick blog on the awesomeness that is PISCO. Pisco is a brandy distilled from white muscat grapes. It is so popular in Chile and Peru, that both nations bicker over which can claim it as the national drink. But, here in America, it is relatively unknown outside of the San Francisco foodie community. I had to majorly struggle to convince my local liquor store that the drink even existed. “It’s not in my liquor books,” he kept saying.
When you can find it… it is delicious. I was turned on to it by my friend and previous co-worker, Andrea, who brought it back from her trip to Chile. When cooking my husband a Chilean themed dinner, I decided to opt for a cocktail course instead of a dessert course. Thus the Strickland household tradition of Pisco Sours and Anna’s Almond Cinnamon This was born.
The only place in all of Michigan where the existence of Pisco is acknowledge the way it deserves to be is at Leopold Bros. of Ann Arbor. In addition to being a brewery, they distill their own gin, vodka, liqueurs, and pisco!! Their menu includes an array of tasty pisco drinks, including piscola, pisco sunrise, and, my favorite, the raspberry pisco margarita. Leopold’s is a wonder in and of itself. Just off of the main street strip, the bar is one of the only hang out havens that doesn’t get uncomfortably overrun in the evenings. They offer large tables for groups, board games, the best jukebox in town, couches, free wi-fi, and a snackable menu (which now includes artisan sandwiches and pizza). It’s cozy, it’s friendly, it’s perfect… only it’s going away forever. The neighborhood rent is driving them to Denver.
The most unfortunate thing is that Ann Arbor-ites know what they are loosing, but can do nothing about it. It’s the fault of the market. All we Leopold lovers can do is hope that the new Denver crowd can appreciate the gem that they are getting. And in the meantime, I’m going to have to start stocking up on Pisco immediately.
idea: good design makes for good usability
I found myself getting into an interesting discussion the other day, after posting my plea to make CellarTracker “prettier”:
“The first thing a good interface designer learns is how to use design clues to help guide the user experience. Design can help tell a user what a site is, what’s important, where to go next. It isn’t just pretty for pretty sake.”
I thought it was worth reiterating in another blog posting, because I feel like we’ve come a long way in the world of web design in the past few years. With the launch of Web 2.0 came a need for new sorts of experts in the field. It is no longer purely information architects, designers, and engineers. There are information designers, experience designers, and interaction designers. There are experiential marketers, design thinkers, and experience strategists. As new technologies (AJAX, Flash) make the experience, on one hand, seemingly more holistic to users, but on the other hand, incredibly more complex to build, every person is having to become smarter about how design informs the user experience. And no matter what grumpy purists like Jakob Nielsen say, this has caused major improvement to the overall web experience.
How Web 2.0 Has Improved Design
1. A rich interface allows for a more natural web interaction
Drag and drop utilizes what cognitive psychologists would call an “affordance”, or a clue that communicates to users how to use an object. It’s natural. From the minute the users sees their cursor turn into an open hand, to when their mouse down causes that hand to grip an object, it feels more connected to real world behavior than endless amounts of up and down arrows.
Many people are making a case for the physics of the iPhone as being a revolutionary step in incorporating more lifelike gestures into the browsing experience. With other technologies, such as Microsoft Surface, taking the hint and offering similar experiences, the future of physical gestures and computing is truly gaining forward momentum. Web 2.0 AJAX and Flash interaction is moving users in a more intuitive direction, getting them away from the past of “point and click” and pushing them towards the future of touch, pinch, and grab.
2. Design clues can communicate purpose
With Web 2.0 sites launching daily, each offering their new twist on a perceived audience need, the marketplace is and has been overrun and overloaded. The only way to gain traction against the competition is to position your site as a simple, yet powerful idea backed by an intuitive web experience. Design clues can help users understand the flavor of your site and how they are supposed to interact with it. It should give them simple direction and set them of running.
3. Good design structure can organize and prioritize content
Successful social content sites (Yelp!, Travelocity, Flickr, etc) offer a wealth of valuable content. However, for a user the content is only as good as how it can be used. This is where good design and information architecture really pay off. By bucketing similar content under easy to understand headers, a user can skim the page, allowing them to understand the content landscape “at a glance” and decide what is important. Futhermore, by using color and icons, design can visually prioritize calls to action and common tasks.
Improving CellarTracker’s User Experience
Since this whole train of thought began with my wish for CellarTracker to take some clues from all those pretty faces in the Wine 2.0 world, I thought I would have a bit of fun and see if I couldn’t put together a slightly improved user experience. My point was not to try and create a gorgeous mock-up that uses AJAX technology and tons of graphics. Not only would that be hard for CellarTracker to implement, but I recognize that really isn’t the desire or need of their audience base. So, with my amateur design skills, I tried my hand at a very minor facelift.
Before / After (click for larger image)
I envision CellarTracker as becoming my portal into the wine web, much like NetVibes is my personal start page for all things web. To do this, the home page for logged in users would need to be more customizable. There should be an ability to turn on and off content. What is important to a wine newbie still learning and exploring is going to be very different than the wine auction aficionado who needs to keep tight tabs on his cellar. The main page should not try and make compromises between these audiences, and instead enable them to craft an experience that is optimized for their needs.
Similarly, I think that sort of philosophy should be applied to sidebar navigation. Certain tasks are more important than others, more frequently used. Right now, all the links carry the same weight and there doesn’t seem to be a logical organization scheme (although there probably is). Visual clues such as icons and more pronounced separation of tasks will empower users to browse more efficiently and more confidently. And as Kathy Sierra can attest, the faster users can get confident about what they are doing, the sooner they can “kick ass” and become passionate about the experience.
web sites: Cork’d vs. CellarTracker!
The record of my wine life for the past 2 and a half years has survived in various and progressively more modern forms… a hand-written journal, a scrapbook of labels, a large deck of alphabetized index cards, an Excel spreadsheet, and finally this blog. No source is an overall authority. In fact, most that live in one form, do not live in any other. Considering that I have built an entire web site around combining my love for “vinology” and “technology”, it was beyond time for me to take my wine lifestream and digitize it. And once I go digital, I never plan on going back.
Almost a year ago, I wrote a blog about what my dream wine web experience would be, in fact, a “web 3.0″ version of a wine site. But lately, my need has become so immediate that I’m willing to seek a more realistic solution while I wait for my dream one to arrive.
There are pieces of my dream out there… there are recommendation engines (Snooth), social networks (Cork’d), and robust organizational tools (CellarTracker), but each are failing to live up to their full potential. Cork’d was at one point a segment darling, but the platform hasn’t been updated in many months. In an effort to be very user friendly, the site is severely limited by it’s simplicity and user generated content. Snooth, in an effort to be more robust than Cork’d, suffers from a less than intuitive user experience. And CellarTracker? Well, it is just plain UGLY.
So… I decided the only way to really commit was to try them all.
Using Snooth, I only got about five entries in before giving up. Honestly, it was just a personal preference, and maybe I will end up trying it again. But, I wanted to give Cork’d priority because of its WineLibraryTV associations and use of the industry standard 100-point system. I built my Cork’d profile to over fifty wine reviews before throwing in the towel there. I was loving the AJAX form entry goodness and I was having fun tagging my wines with words like “zesty” and “musty”. But, as my list grew and grew, it became really unmanageable. No sorting ability? Really? What happens when I get up to my full 350 wine history?
The other big problem with Cork’d is that it all relies on user entered wine data. They are not connected to the big wine database in the sky, so they are completely dependent on user discretion and whim to fill in data accurately and remain consistent (although Cork’d offers them no “best practices” there). A wine entered by one user as “2005 McManis Petite Sirah” and another as “McManis 2005 Petite Sirah” are ultimately the same wine, but because of platform limitations, they will appear as though they were two separate wines.
Frustrated, I left the world of Cork’d, plugged my nose and began my adventure with CellarTracker, my last option left. Why does it have to be so very ugly? It looks like something ancient, something Web 0.5, with blue links, black text on white, and non-existent margins. But, to my pleasant surprise, the functionality was all that I needed and then some. A huger than huge wine database that allows me to easily review, rate, cellar, buy, and add to my “wish list”? Unlimited customizable wish lists? An easy to use mobile version? The ability to tie my blog entries to wines I’ve rated? Wow!!
You can really make the site what you want (well, except pretty). You can even save your favorite review sources and wine shops.
There are still some limits that seem easy enough to fix:
1. Make it a little more like my NetVibes. Allow me to feed in my own favorite wine RSS to populate expert reviews, wine articles, and industry news. Why should I have to manually add articles?
2. Give me the ability to do some limited skinning. If you aren’t going to make it pretty, at least let me!!
3. Take some learnings from Cork’d. Can I have a profile please, just to add a little flavor and make things a little more social? Oh, and you definitely need to hop onto the tagging bandwagon. Wines are not just regions, varietals, and 100-point ratings, they are flavors, smells, and experiences.
I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I think that stinky ol’ CellarTracker has the most opportunity to become the ultimate web wine tool. With the lack of updates and robust personalization on Cork’d, they wouldn’t even have to try that hard. It’s no longer about social for social sake, but the ability to personalize the tools and experience. If CellarTracker can just add a pretty face and some extensions, they could really be a force to be reckoned with.
wine: Peter Lehmann Clancy’s, 7 Deadly Zins 2005
movie: Antitrust
This month’s WBW (Wine Blog Wednesday) snuck up so quickly. I actually only found out about it on Monday, but the theme was so fun that I decided to go for it. This month it is all about “Comfort Wines”. The Wine Life Today blog challenges:
“Comfort Wines - choose a wine, any wine, that you love to unwind to and tell us about not only the wine but what makes the experience special and relaxing for you!”
This is exactly the type of evening I should be talked into more often!!
I asked my husband to go to the wine store and choose a couple of wines he thought represented the best of our evenings in together. I tried to guess what he’d bring home, and I almost hit the nail on the head. He walked in with three bottles: McManis Petite Sirah, Peter Lehmann Clancy’s, and 7 Deadly Zins. “7 Deadly Zins?” I asked, “I would have guessed Karly Buck Ten Point Zin.” He said they were out, but he thought the 7 Deadly might be more appropriate with the comfort theme… gluttony, sloth 
So what goes good with some deep dark drinkable New World wines? Mmmm… comfort food of quality steaks and homemade macaroni and cheese. But what else? What else absolutely defines a night of comfort between cynical newlyweds enjoying their pre-children freedom? Pajamas and non-stop bad movies from the minute we get home from work… specifically a practical cult classic bad movie, Dreamcatcher, and also two delightfully terrible movies featuring some of the most unrealistic computer-based plots, The Net and Antitrust.
3 great wines, 3 terrible movies… but only one night. One ratio is going win out over the other. Two wines, one movie was the end result.
Peter Lehmann Clancy’s 2005 What a great steak wine!! It smells of alcohol, crayons and subtle fruit. Tom smells paint thinner. The taste is of red liquorice and raspberry. It has a high acidity, yet it is still smooth and not overly dry. No dark fruit, not sour. It is quite balanced and lively.
7 Deadly Zins 2005 Smells of dried cherries and salt. Tom smells gouda, no smoked sausage, yet he says it smells like a Zin? I certainly get the Zin smell and taste I have only been able to describe as “pencil lead”, very industrial. He never knows what I’m talking about there. The smell also reminds us of our honeymoon, rich Napa wines. It tastes exactly how it smells, strong cherries and raspberries with high alcohol.
Antitrust was terrible and watchable, exactly what we could hope it could be. You have Ryan Phillipe in a particularly unfortunate role as an open-source programmer who is enticed to join Microsoft… oh I mean NURV (which sounds way dumber than Microsoft). Then, you have Tim Robbins in a obviously, yet equally over-the-top impersonation of an evil evil Bill Gates who gladly kills innocent programmers to steal their code to make his rich self even richer. Mwah-hah-hah, world domination by way of this amazing technology called “Synapse” in which anyone in the world can send messages, pictures, and audio to anyone else. Oh, you mean like e-mail, or text messages, or the internet (this was 2000 after all)? No, some proprietary revolutionary poopy software called “Synapse”.
A wonderful night. We are finishing the rest of our movies and wines tonight… Dreamcatcher is just as wonderfully bad as I remember, perhaps even better (worse?).
recipe: Provenance Napa Valley Merlot 2003
The challenge of this Wine Blog Wednesday (WBW) is to write your review in exactly 7 words. I have to say that, unfortunately, this wasn’t that hard of a challenger, because the wine I drank was not very inspiring, despite its $35 price tag.
Smooth, raspberry, vanilla, drinkable, nothing special, over-priced
UPDATE: Apparently I did not read the instructions right, and the challenge was to write about an ITALIAN red in only 7 words. Doh!! Well, through the magic of the internet, I am going to update this entry to include my Valentine’s Day dinner wine, which was actually contrarily very special and very memorable and ironically not as expensive. Barone Ricasoli Brolio Chianti Classico 2003 was a wine my husband and I had at a fantastic lunch in the Tuscan hills. It was actually the least memorable of 3 wines we had at that lunch, the most memorable being a Super Tuscan called Casalferro that the AltItalia authorities stole from us in the Rome airport. Last night however, the wine was incredibly memorable, so without further ado.
Dark, lush, toasty, complex, better when shared
wine: portuguese table wines
In order to maximize efficiency… I am two thumbing this entry from sunny LA while I am on a work trip.
I searched high and low for decently odd Portuguese wines in Michigan and there just isn’t an exquisite selection. I did find, however, some unique treasures hidden in a dusty bargain bin at the cleverly disguised wine store, The Village Corner in Ann Arbor. I call it cleverly disguise because it looks like a small scummy college liquor shop from the outside, and well… from the inside too. But turn the right corner and you are in floor to ceiling wine heaven.
My overall impression of Portuguese wines is that they are very dry and very dense. And that even the ones without too much fruity flavor are balanced enough to be highly drinkable.
Quinto do Carmo Vinho Regional Alentejano 2000 $27
Blend of Aragonez, Alicante, Periquita, and Trincadeira. Tried this baby with a recipe for Portuguese Chicken. Not so great with the food but excellent with chocolate. Rich dense dark fruit, very dry with a cutting bite. A smooth long finish. It is like a more subtle Zin with a dryer finish. Actually I take back what I said about the chicken. It was the dish that was not so good, the wine actually filled in some of the flavor gaps missing in the food.
Dows Vale Do Bomfim Duoro Reserva 2004 $12
Recommended by my Canton wine guy, but this was our least favorite of the four. Equal parts of Touriga Franca and Tinta Roriz. It was dense and hard to open… in fact it never really did. It was ungiving, very dry and did not play nice with food. Hot acidic and even after opening, it felt empty. No fruit payoff.
Quinta de Catralvos Lisa Vinho Regional Terras Do Sado 2005 $9
First bargain bin find. Castelão (Periquita) - 90% and Alicante Bouschet - 10%. Lovely round fruit feel that mellows spicy food well. Not huge flavor but very drinkable. Similar to previously mentioned Duoro wine but more rich and thick with earthy payoff. Not fruit forward or distinct but good value and interesting find.
Escanção Vinho Tinto Reserva 2001 $8
Another bargain bin cheapy. Dry bitter apple skin taste. Mild sour melds into round fruit then dry finish. Smooth sweet pleasant aftertaste. The salmon was too fishy for it but the meatiness of the fish complimented the chewiness in the wine. It was simple but so very drinkable.
Overall… Portugual is a great country for value and drinkability. I will be buying some of these again.
Update: In my hunt for strange wines while I was here in California, I actually found an official table wine of Portugal, a “Vinho de Mesa”.
Cavipor Caseiro Vinho de Mesa Tinto $5
A chemically aroma of fruit, like an artificial fragrance. The taste is very simple, very dry, and reminds me of apple skin in its bitter fruit flavor. Upon opening, there really is no complexity or flavor that appears, but it is smooth and thus highly drinkable. Reminds me of a low sugar cranberry juice. Not entirely weird to imagine drinking it with breakfast. Highly food friendly.
technorati tags: wine blog wednesdays, portuguese wines
wine: Barbera
When I first heard the theme for this month’s Wine Blog Wednesday, I got very excited to push myself to investigate some unique varietals that I’ve been meaning to try. My first choice was Aglianico (pronounced “ah-LYAH-nee-koe”), but that is apparently hard to come by in SE Michigan. Oh well, I’ll save that one for another day. Once I’m willing to make the trek out to Ann Arbor for a wine run, I know Bello Vino has some Ars Poetica Vulcano, which is supposedly a steal for under $10.
Instead, I chose to sample a variety of Barbera wines:
This was my first time having Barbera and I thought it would be interesting to get a since for the similarities and differences between the different price points. After comparing my notes with some research on the grape, I think that my experience is pretty typical of the varietal, and it is certainly a wine I’d consider purchasing again.
I sampled all three wines over the course of two events with some dishes I thought would be appropriate. I served the wine with a smoky Porcini-Pecorino Steak Stroganoff one night and good ol’ Hungry Howie’s pizza with mushrooms, pepperoni, and onion the second.
COSTA DI BUSSIA Arcapla Langhe
Aroma of chemicals (rubber cement and crazy glue) with a faint whiff of buried fruit. First sip is tangy, strong acidity, and oh so dark fruits, blackberry. The aftertaste is quite dry with subtle fruit flavors. The flavor is inky, as it is hard to pick up any distinct flavors underneath the acidity. Great with the pizza, which mellows out the acid and gives a nice smoky finish.
VIETTI Barbera d’Asti Tre Vigne
Same aroma of chemicals only with a hint of raisins and vanilla. This was definitely oak aged as the first flavors to peak out are sweet vanilla and smoke that combine into an almost coconut flavor after a while. This wine is dark, rich, and smooth, and was our favorite of the evening. It went fantastic with the mushroom dish with a highly complex finish that brought out the sweet strawberry flavors. Not so much acid which makes it easier (as easy as a typical Italian wine, particularly Barbera, can be I suppose) to drink without food.
CASTELVERO Piedmont Barbera
Same chemicals on the nose, must be a Barbera signature, but mingled with overripe cherries and I’m almost smelling a bit of the Shaw in here. Not a good sign. This wine lacks definition. It is brighter and lighter than the other Barberas, which makes it go down smooth with the food, but it is disappointingly simple. Drinking it on its own is out of the question, too much acid, which tends to make it taste even cheaper.
technorati tags: wine blog wednesdays, barbera, piedmont
wine: dream shop
I have been meaning to write this article for a while. I was firstly inspired by my once colleague, still friend’s comment on one of my previous articles, wherein he mentioned wine needing a faceted classification system, a concept first presented by one of the fathers of library science, S. R. Ranganathan. Upon reading more about Ranganathan’s five laws of library science, I was inspired to delve deeper into my idea of the perfect wine store.
I was inspired, but then forgot… until this month’s Wine Blog Wednesday was announced. The focus is on indigenous grapes, which reminded me how important “location, location, location” is to learn as a wine fan and how HARD and not fun wine shops make it to learn the interconnectedness of things like flavor, food pairing, varietal, style, age-ability, and region (see terroir).
So, here is my proposition for my perfect wine store. First, this wine store would understand and live by the five laws of library science, which I think are important enough to reiterate here. These rules would be plastered on the walls of my ideal wine shop:
So, with the rules of business out of the way. How do you take care of this issue of faceted classification? It works well for online wine stores (Wine.com, Cork’d), where you can utilize tags and multi-attribute navigation options. But how does that translate into a physical store experience that will allow the user to take away a holistic view of wine and its many dimensions, or more importantly the dimensions they want to pay attention to.
My perfect wine store would be laid out like map, meaning different areas of the store would be dedicated to different countries. In each section would be signs with easy to identify icons that highlight the other facets: cost, flavor profile, food pairing, etc. This will allow “browsers” to wander around the store and tune into the information that they need, whilst learning more about aspects they hadn’t know (i.e. champagne isn’t the only fizzy wine in the world, italian wines are a great match for mushrooms, and portugal and southern france are great resources for inexpensive tasty reds). The store would feature periodic kiosks and store maps for the “searchers”, so that they can easily locate their targets, develop a shopping list, and get recommended “wines they might like” or other wines uses like them bought.
I attempted to express this idea more in depth via a personalized Google Map that highlights the different flavors, food pairings, and varietals of some key wines in Europe.
It’s a dream, but with the leaps and bounds being made in the online web world… it is only a matter of time before the physical retail world will be expected to catch up.
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